


Head and Heart

by ashesandhoney



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: F/M, Ficlet Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-04
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-06 18:19:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 8,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16837879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ashesandhoney/pseuds/ashesandhoney
Summary: A collection of very short AUs about Shiro and Allura.





	1. Soulmate AU

Fate traced paths across galaxies and centuries and wound its way through the lives of every living thing. Sometimes it left marks. Hints. Suggestions. Reminders. There were people that fate had marked then abandoned to follow the path on their own. 

Allura’s mark was gibberish. Beautiful gibberish but untranslatable. She had tried. Advisers around the court had tried. Three symbols. Blocks of angular lines. She practiced how to write them. The marks were the same colour as the other marks on her skin but smaller and more delicate. Each stroke drawn with a tiny pen. They meant something but she made it to adulthood without ever learning what. 

Fate was busy spinning its web and war came and it all stopped feeling so important. The marks were a hint to her path but she woke up one morning to news of attacks and battles and her path was clear. She didn’t need some warning in some undiscovered language to tell her that her planet was her responsibility, that the fate of the universe came before childish whispering about marks and romance and finding the one that fate intended for you. 

They lost. She slept. She woke to a universe that was still fighting that same war. She woke to find it all in her hands and she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t ready for Voltron to be her responsibility. She wasn’t ready to pilot a ship built for thousands of people and every one of those people were dead. Fate hadn’t left her another choice so she did what she could. 

“What are you drawing?” he asked. 

She looked up to find Shiro leaning over her and looking down at the piece of paper where she had been doodling. Her screen was still running calculations and she was waiting for the computer to give her back an answer so she could finish plotting this course. One of her symbols. One of her soul marks sketched out in different sizes and patterns across the page. 

“It’s nothing, I’m just bored,” she said. 

“Huh,” he said with a shrug. 

“Why?” 

“Where’d you pick up that word? Something of Keith’s?” 

“Word.” 

“Does it mean something in Altean? It’s just shockingly similar to the kanji for gold. This one more than this one but it’s still close enough to be readable.” 

“You can read it.” 

“Yeah,” he gave her a funny look. She was staring at him. The symbols had meant nothing for so long that to have someone lean over her shoulder and just read it like any other word left her unbalanced. Pidge had taught her the letters of their language in return for a lesson in Altean. It had been fun to trade language rules and details back and forth but it put to bed any theories that her marks might have something to do with these aliens who were running around on the Ship of Lions. 

Now Shiro was looking over her shoulder and telling her that she was wrong. She held his gaze for a long moment and then wrote out the full set. He frowned at the paper and then glanced at her when she was done. 

Shiro laughed and sat down in the chair beside her. 

“You’re screwing with me,” he laughed again. “You looked so serious. I thought this was going to be some bizarre alien thing where you’d previously made contact with Earthlings or something. Your stroke order is terrible by the way.” 

“Why am I screwing with you? What does it mean?” she smiled at him because he was laughing and she was too surprised by the reaction to do anything but smile back at him. 

“It’s my name.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one deserves to be expanded.  
> Someday.


	2. Teacher AU

They were hiring a new head of science. Allura was already worried. She was head of math and the two departments always ended up getting lumped together in staff meetings and the like. He was going to be at the next staff meeting before he started after the spring break and she was worried about it. 

He turned out to be hot and for a moment that threw off all her other plans to assess how hard he would be to work with. He was taller than she was, two tone hair, had been in the actual space program before an injury had grounded him. He told the story like it was nothing. Just a little getting to know you thing like, I have a dog and went to such and such university. Allura still couldn’t decide what she thought of him as a coworker. 

Three months in and she had decided she liked him. He was good. His stuff was done on time, thanks to the principal’s inability to remember which department physics fell under, she had just taken it upon herself to help the new guy get up to speed with the mountain of paper work and all the little intricacies of the school politics. 

By the time they had made it to Christmas break he had become her closest ally against the English department’s drama and the drama department’s refusal to admit that anyone else had a right to use the auditorium. He came and sat in her office to hide from students when he needed to get grading done. 

The students loved him. He let them call him Shiro instead of Mr. Shirogane. Allura suspected that he had been directly involved in the bottle rocket gone wrong that had destroyed an entire class set of brand new biology textbooks. Students feared her more often than they loved her. She could make an entire room fall silent with a look but she had never once needed to hide in someone else’s office to grade her exams. 

“Does the principal really notice as little as he seems to?” Shiro asked without looking up from his pile of papers. 

She looked at him. “That man is as dense as a brick. I’m not sure he’d notice if the students all turned into aliens unless someone filled out the right form in triplicate.” 

“Good.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to do something unprofessional and I don’t want to get fired for it.” 

“More unprofessional than the flaming textbooks?”

He let out a beautiful laugh and said “Good point. No, it is not that unprofessional. So I’m probably fine.” 

“What are you going to do?” she asked. 

“Ask out a colleague.” 

She blinked at him but didn’t say anything. 

“You like sushi, I was thinking about that place near the museum and I thought it would be better to have company,” he said it as casually as he said everything but he looked up at her as he got to the end of it. She stared at him long enough for his smile to start to droop. 

“There’s a little one down by the mall, not as pretty, better food, they’ll give us a discount,” she said. 

“Done. I have three more of these and then we’ll go?” he said waving an exam paper in her direction. 

“Perfect,” she said with a big smile. 


	3. Roommate AU

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is one of my faves.

She sat on the kitchen counter, swinging her feet and eating a cup of yogurt with a measuring spoon because the regular spoons were all in the tottering pile of dishes balanced in the sink beside her.

“When my friends heard I was moving in with a girl they all told me that it would be hell because girls are fussy about cleaning,” he said.

“I really will do them,” she told him.

He tilted his head at her, ready to accuse her of being a filthy liar and then he registered what she was wearing. A pair of shorts that left a lot of her legs uncovered, no socks, a scarf haphazardly failing to keep her hair out of her face and his shirt.

“Is that mine?”

“You left it on the sofa. I was cold.”

He looked her over again. Inappropriately. Shit. He turned around to the fridge. She was hot. That had always been true but before it had been a distant kind of hot. She was unattainable and beautiful and he didn’t really want any of that.

Two months in and he’d learned that she’d grown up rich and never learned to clean her house. She took hour long baths and cooked really well even if she never washed the dishes. She spent an hour at the gym everyday out of enjoyment. She never left the house looking less than perfect but she washed her makeup off and was barefoot and braless within two minutes of arriving home.

She had quickly wormed her way into being his favourite person to spend time with.

Now she was wearing his shirt and that detail made everything shift sideways.

She was no longer so unattainable and suddenly he really really wanted her. He turned back around to look at her and she was licking the spoon. He waited until she was done and had dropped it into the heap in the sink before he spoke.

“Do you usually wear my stuff?”

“I don’t go in your room.”

“Not the question.”

An elegant shrug that knocked a few more strands of hair down from the scarf. She said, “If you leave it around, sometimes I do. I’m not the only messy one living here.”

“Why?”

“Am I messy? Well-”

“Why do you steal my clothes?” he asked.

A long moment where she looked him in the eye.

“They smell good.”

He frowned. She smiled.

“What would you do if I kissed you?” she asked.

He blinked. Had she just said that? She slid down off the counter and landed lightly on bare feet. Her toenails were painted pink. He watched her take two steps towards him and dragged his attention back up from her legs.

“Why?” he asked again.

“Because I haven’t caught you looking at me like that before and I want to be sure of your reaction before I do it,” she said.

“I’d either push you back against the wall and kiss you breathless or I’d be so shocked I wouldn’t be able to move.”

“Can I choose?”

“Are you going to kiss me?” he asked.

“I’d like to.”

“Yes.”

“Wall.”

“Wall,” he repeated a little stupidly.

She was closer and even though she hadn’t touched him yet, he was already losing his mind.

“You’re cute when you’re startled,” she did touch him, just a brush of her finger along his jaw. He was very startled. “But I’d much rather you leave me breathless.”

“I can try.”

That was an inane thing to say but Allura broke into a smile as though he was flirting and it adorable. She wrapped an arm around his neck and waited for him to pull her in. He caught her face in both hands and turned it up to his. She smiled again and leaned the rest of the way into the kiss and that was all it took to leave him breathless.


	4. Tattoo Artist/Florist AU

The girl worked somewhere on the same street as his shop and walked by every morning with a coffee in hand. There had been a day, months ago, when he’d just finished cleaning up a spilled bouquet. She’d been walking by and he offered her the flower. It had been empty flirting. She was pretty, he’d been standing there with a flower in hand and she had made eye contact so he’d given it to her.

It had become a tradition. A little thirty second conversation every morning when he offered her some flower he’d chosen for her. He’d pick them out the night before while he was cutting the new stock or first thing in the morning when he was arranging the bouquets that would go out to be sold as-is. Sometimes it was something cheap and simple like a daisy or a bit of baby’s breath but sometimes he’d find a rose or a heavy headed gardenia that would catch his attention and he’d set it aside for her.

Sometimes she would ask questions and he’d get an extra few seconds with her as he talked about zinnas and she spun the bloom in her fingers. Other days she would ask him to tuck it into her hair. She always gave him a smile like he was the best thing she could imagine.

She wore tight jeans that hung low on her hips, shirts that slipped sideways off her shoulders when she moved, boots that looked like they’d be hard to walk in. Her hair was a brilliant white that had to come from expensive dyes. She had tattoos along her shoulders and the little pieces of her back he had seen. Bright colours in geometric patterns. She even had marks on her face that should have looked ridiculous but somehow, she made it elegant. She was gorgeous.

He would drop hints, flirt a little harder some days than others but she wasn’t interested. She smiled and laughed and was so happy to have a flower but he couldn’t get any flash of real interest from her. He could have asked her out but doing that when she wasn’t interested would mean losing this adorable little morning ritual. It didn’t need to be romantic to be good. It made her day and it made him smile and those two things were enough.

“How do you take your coffee?” she asked one morning as he tucked a pink rosebud into her hair.

“My coffee?”

“Or tea? Or orange juice?”

“I like my coffee black, with lots of sugar,” he said, “Why?”

“I’m going to bring you one tomorrow.”

And she did as she promised. She showed up the next morning with a coffee cup and somehow that became part of it. She would linger by his door, drinking her coffee while he finished setting up the displays and wrapping the bouquets.

“Where do you work?” he asked.

“Nearby.”

“I’m smart enough to figure out that much, thank you,” he said. “I meant which shop.”

“I work at the tattoo parlour on the corner,” she said.

Fora little while, it was enough to have those few minutes in the morning where they would trade a flower for a cup of coffee and she would make conversation about nothing and everything.

“Where are you from?” he asked one day.

“I’ve got an apartment near the park,” she said.

“I meant. You’ve got an accent, did you grow up here?”

“No.”

“How long have you been here?”

“Three years,” she said. She was spinning the flower he’d given her between her fingers. It was a little uneven so it had gone into a discard pile but she liked anything that wasn’t a solid colour and the sunset pinks and oranges were the type of thing to make her smile. She had been thrilled by it but now she fiddled with the stem enough to make him worry that she would break it.

“Do you like it?”

“Some parts,” she glanced up at him and he let himself imagine for a moment that it meant something but then her gaze moved on, “I miss home.”

“Where’s home?”

“Somewhere that doesn’t exist anymore.”

“Are you a refugee?”

“I suppose I am, yes,” she said.

She didn’t expand or explain and the conversation had moved on and she was on her way to work before he could figure out how to phrase it to dig for more information. He wanted to know everything. He wanted to know her favourite colour and whether she was ticklish and what her opinions on politics were and whether or not she liked mushrooms on her pizza. He was falling for her a little harder every time they spoke.

That was what made him more daring. She hadn’t responded to any of his verbal flirting so he started flirting a little more physically. She hadn’t said no but she also hadn’t said yes so he tried to be as reserved as he could be. He touched her hand when he took the cup of coffee and he played with her hair as he tucked the flower into it.

She didn’t say a word about it but this she returned. She tilted her head and leaned in when he touched her hair. She caught him by surprise one morning when she showed up a little bit early and she reached around him to put the coffee on the table in front of him so for a brief moment, she had her arm around his waist. She would cross her arms and mimic him when he stood considering a bouquet that didn’t balance the way he wanted it to. Sometimes she would get a little closer and stand right at his shoulder so they were almost touching.

“Can I ask your advice?” he said one morning.

“Of course,” she said.

“I want to ask out this girl but she only seems interested about half the time and I don’t know if asking her out will just ruin a perfectly good friendship,” he said.

She looked at him and he held her gaze until he was very very sure that she understood what he was asking.

“She’s probably just a little socially inept,” she said.

“That could be it.”

“You should ask,” she said, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

“You think so?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He finished tucking the flower into her hair. Ok, he stopped playing with her hair. The flower was in place long before he stepped back.

“Do you want to go to dinner with me?”

“Yes.”

He laughed and she caught his face in one hand and turned his chin up so she could kiss him.

> **Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the actual premise that I didn’t write: Instead of getting sealed into the Castle of Lions, Allura gets launched out in an escape pod of some kind that crash lands on earth. She’s stuck trying to get by and trying to figure out how to get home. Unfortunately, humans haven’t invented deep space travel and Earth is so isolated that even the deep space trade caravans don’t stop there. So she’s trapped and stranded but at least the guy who gives her flowers in the morning helps keep her sane. 


	5. Wings AU

She’s been asleep for too long and she stands on the edge of the balcony and bounces on her toes. One of the humans passes by the room and comes in to frown at her. The older one. Tall and scarred and the most stable of the five. She has her doubts that they can do this but she isn’t going to be the one to make them doubt it.

“I really hope that you aren’t planning on jumping,” he says.

“I am. It’s a perfect day.”

“To jump off a balcony.”

“It’s easier than getting airborne from the ground.”

“Airborne?”

She smiles at him and unfurls the wings. Her wingspan is more than twice her height but the gossamer of the wings is translucent. The wings are white and pink but the light shines through them as though they were spun from glass. She stretches them and closes her eyes to just enjoy the feel of the wind.

“Oh,” he said.

She spins on him and smiles. He is staring up at her with his mouth a little bit open and she hops down off the rail to stand in front of him. What is his name? He looks at her like she’s done something impressive and she grins back at him. Everything is terrible. The universe is broken and she doesn’t know how to fix it but in this moment, she’s about to take flight and she almost doesn’t care. Almost.

“You can fly with those?”

“Yes,” she said.

His fingers flutter and then he snatches them back before they can reach out and touch her. She stretches the wings and folds them back along her spine, she doesn’t put them away. She doesn’t want to wrap them back up in the magic and hide them away again. A moment later she stretches one of them out toward him and taps it against his metal arm. He raises his eyebrows at her and laughs like he understood that she was mocking him.

“Petting people’s wings is weird,” she tells him.

“I didn’t do it,” he says with another laugh. “I knew it would be weird. I wasn’t trying to be weird. It’s just surprising.”

She laughs and pokes him with a wingtip again. An apology, an attempt to show him that she was only joking. He raises his hands and then tucks them into his pockets. She decides that maybe she likes this one, He watches her climb back up onto the rail and stretch the wings out again. He keeps his hands tucked into his pockets but inches closer to the edge so that when she jumps, he watches her catch her fall on a few wing beats. Then the wind is under her wings and she doesn’t care about anything else. She turns over and drops into a dive just to feel the wind in her hair.

(something something, there’s a theory running around about the black bayard giving Shiro wings like the lion got right? That’d be super cute in this world).


	6. Alien/Detective

She stopped and took a half step back into him. He caught her shoulders and then dropped his hands ass soon as she was steady. Her head tipped back and she blinked a few times. Her hair fell away from her face. She shook her head and stepped back under the overhang brushing raindrops back out of her hair.

“You’re staring at the sky like you’ve never seen rain before,” he said.

“I’ve never seen rain before,” she said. “Is it water?”

“Funny.”

She looked at him and snapped her mouth shut into a little glare. Takashi Shirogane had only gotten the promotion that spring and this was his first weird case. The Garrison attracted the weirdos but usually they were weirdos. The picketers who feared the nuclear engines in the ships. The picketers who argued that the Garrison and the entire space program was not a scientific endeavour at all but instead a way for the country to prep for war. The people who were looking for proof of aliens. There were categories.

This was his first one who claimed to be an alien.

She was starting to make him nervous. They had picked her up on the side of the interstate. The white hair, the facial tattoo, a gown. She would only talk to someone if they were holding one of her earrings. She claimed it was a translator and unceasingly spoke musical nonsense if you refused to take it. Shiro had only been on the case for a few hours, she had only been picked up that afternoon. He was supposed to be taking her for a psych eval and now she was standing on the steps and staring at the sky.

“Does it happen often here?”

“No. We’re in the middle of the desert. The rainy season lasts about five minutes. I’ll get an umbrella,” he said. He left her standing there in her dress, looking like a beautiful escapee from a renaissance fair, and went back inside.

“You lucked out this time, who did you piss off to get assigned the crazy one?” the desk sergeant asked.

“She’s hot,” someone else added leaning on the desk to look at the girl.

“She got her face tattooed and the nurse says the ears have to be cosmetic surgery. That is a level of crazy that no amount of hot can balance out,” the first guy said.

“Troubled girl, lost in the desert, shut up,” Shiro said and then went back outside to hand an umbrella to the girl in question who was leaning out into the rain to watch the drops bead up on her hand. He stared at her for a long minute before she looked back at him. Her expression was less observant bemusement and more lost. She hadn’t looked upset since arriving. Even the officers in the patrol car that had brought her in said that she was remarkably calm.

“You ok?” he asked.

“I hadn’t fully believed how far from home I was until I saw this,” she said waving a hand at the sky.

“We’ll figure it out, I’ll help get you home.”

Her calm confidence slid back into place after the flash of worry and she smiled at him. There was something weird about her eyes but she glanced back out at the rain before he could figure out what it was. He snapped open her umbrella for her and led her out into rain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one might get another life as a full AU. 
> 
> I have ideas.


	7. Fairy Tale AU

Shiro’s plane had gone down over occupied territory. He’d dragged himself from the wreckage and stumbled to his feet. There was something wrong with his arm, he’d slammed his head into something hard but he could walk and he didn’t want to be there when the enemy came looking for the wreck.

It was starting to get dark when he found the ruin. He needed a doctor but he didn’t know where he had landed or whether he could expect the locals to be friendly. The big stone pile of a building still had a solid roof and one of the towers still stood.

Shiro checked that there weren’t any wolves or bears nesting on the main floor and curled up to sleep in the corner of a room that still had most of a door.

He woke with first light to the sound of engines overhead. No gun fire. Just the distant drone of fighter jets. They passed by once and then the world fell silent again. His head ached. He was hungry. His survival pack had a few rations and some aspirin. He bound up the broken arm with one of the bandages - swearing at every movement - and ate enough to take the edge off the hunger.

Then he went off to explore the ruin. It was in good shape despite the broken windows and the north wall that had been taken out in a bombing raid at some point in the last two years. The second floor was solid and the tower still had its doors in place.

He dragged them open and started up the winding stairs. At the top was an over-grown bedroom. Vines had climbed the walls outside and curled in over the window sill and were working their way across the floor and up along the ceiling. The tattered remains of a tapestry hung on one wall and a shattered mirror on another.

In the middle of the room, velvet curtains hung around a giant four-poster bed. Unlike every other piece of the ruin, it was in excellent shape. The velvet was deep purple unfaded by time or sunlight or dust. The wood was polished and unscratched.

Shiro pushed back the curtain and lying on the bed, in a blue and white dress that had to be 500 years out of date, was a young woman. She was shockingly pretty with dark skin and long white hair that had been spread out around her on the bed. Her hands were folded together on her stomach. She was still as death but Shiro had seen corpses in the last two years of this goddamn war and he was sure that she wasn’t dead.

The air around the bed felt different. Cooler. Softer. Warmer. Brighter. All of that was true. None of it made sense. He was absolutely intruding. He was dirty and bloody and foriegn and this little pocket of magic wasn’t meant for people like him. He was caught in it like an animal in a trap.

A voice whispered and his head snapped up, looking for the speaker.

It came again.

He spun, groping for a gun with the wrong hand, but there was no one there.

He had to strain to hear it.

“A paladin will wake the Princess and break the curse.”

“Listen ghost lady, I’m about as far from King Arthur or that Tolkien nonsense as you can get but you people shouldn’t stay here. Either you or the girl. The bombing raids have already hit the other tower. There’s a munitions plant less than a mile out and there’s a chancr you’re going to get caught in the raids if you stay this close.”

Shiro’s voice was thunderously loud in the silence of the forest. The plant wasn’t close enough to hear the work or the vehicles. It had been the last landmark he’d seen. It couldn’t be that far away. He might have been overselling the danger but it was wrong to leave people in bombed out ruins.

“Chosen. Chosen. Chosen,” the ghostly voice said.

“Ha ha,” he said in the flatest voice he could muster. “Hilarious.”

It kept whispering at him. He leaned over to shake the girl’s shoulder. She stayed still and expressionless. He couldn’t lift her with the broken arm and the owner of the voice hadn’t shown themselves. Shiro sat down on the edge of the bed and frowned at the unconscious woman and ran his choices.

He reached out to shake her again and something slammed into the back of his head, knocking him over. He couldn’t catch himself because of the broken arm. And collapsed down onto the girl on the end. His face smashed into hers and he swore. She was unconscious but he came up apologizing anyways.

“Who was that?” he called out.

A pair of white animals that might have been mice hung on the curtains and he could have sworn they were laughing at him. He glared at them. They chittered and scurried away.

Shiro turned back to the girl. She blinked big blue eyes at him and sat up slowly.

“You broke the curse,” she said.


	8. Cafe AU

Allura was working in the office but she had the door open so she could hear Hunk and Lance attempt to train the new girl. Lance was making it sound too easy and Hunk was over explaining and when the espresso machine sputtered and screeched and all three of them screamed, Allura wasn’t really surprised. It was a temperamental piece of machinery.

She put down the budget sheets and leaned out the door to look at them all. They hadn’t sprayed coffee all over themselves and for a moment she was relieved. That only lasted a moment. They hadn’t sprayed coffee all over themselves but they had sprayed it all over a customer.

“I’m so sorry,” Pidge said.

The customer was tall and startled and his hair was dripping and splattered with coffee grounds. He stood there with his cup of coffee in hand and stared at them all. He slowly put the cup down and pushed the hair back from his face with a grimace. It was black with streaks of white over his forehead. He had great jaw line. Allura stared at him for a minute before her customer service skills kicked back in.

“Why don’t you come and use our staff bathroom to get cleaned up. Lance will remake your drink,” Allura shot him a look and he nodded, “And we’ll give you a free baked good. We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.”

“Inconvenience,” he repeated with a little laugh.

“You could try, I apologize for the exploding coffee machine from hell,” Lance suggested and Allura shot him another look. The customer took her up on the offer to use the bathroom and Allura gave Lance one more glare as she ushered the poor coffee covered man into the back. He had a duffle bag and a dry-cleaning bag with him and his t-shirt was splattered with coffee from shoulder to shoulder. At least he didn’t appear to have any burns. The machine’s biggest problem was that it didn’t heat properly. She needed to replace it.

A few minutes later, he stuck his head back out of the room. The grounds were gone but he still looked bedraggled. It was a little bit hot. The wet messy hair. Cheeks pink from getting scrubbed. He was kind of gorgeous.

“Is there a motel or something nearby where I could get a real shower?” he asked.

“No,” Allura said. “Not unless you take a train up into downtown proper.”

“I’ll be late,” he said.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Where are you headed maybe there’s something on the way?”

“I’m headed out to the base. Maybe they’ll let me use a barracks shower when I get there but I was really hoping not to show up looking like this,” he said. “I’m getting an award and they’re going to want me to meet people. Maybe I can make it downtown or the airport if I take a taxi.”

“I have an apartment. This building has been in my family for generations. I live upstairs. You can use my shower, bathtub. It’s not a proper shower. But it’ll be better than that sink,” she said.

He told her that he couldn’t possible impose like that but she refused to be turned down. She took his dry cleaners bag and waved him up the back stairs to show him her bathroom which was a bit of a disaster that overflowed with products and too many towels and she was pretty sure that the bobby pins were breeding on the counter because she had never bought that many. It wasn’t too embarrassing.

“It’s fine. Just don’t rob me,” she said.

“I swear, I won’t rob you,” he said with a smile that made him more gorgeous.

Allura went back downstairs to find Hunk mopping and Pidge disassembling the espresso machine and fiddling with the pieces inside. She looked up at Allura and launched into an explanation of what she thought was wrong with it that Allura couldn’t follow in the slightest.

“So, did you take the hot guy upstairs and bang him and now he can’t move?” Lance asked.

“That comment is a textbook example of sexual harassment, Mr. McClain,” Allura said without missing a beat. Lance just shrugged and Allura elbowed him until he laughed. “I let him use my shower. He’s a war hero on his way to pick up some award at the air force base outside of town. You don’t send war heroes to shower in the Haven Motel.”

“Heroin Haven,” Hunk said.

“Heroine like Wonder Woman?” Pidge asked.

“Nope, it’s basically a drug den that rents out the rooms that haven’t been completely trashed,” Lance said. “I stayed there once on a dare.”

“Delightful,” Allura said.

“It wasn’t,” Lance said.

Pidge kept tinkering with the espresso machine. She was balanced on the counter itself and had found a wrench set somewhere in the back room. Hunk was there beside her, leaning in to look at the machine and make suggestions. Lance just watched them with a frown. Allura watched for a little while before she went back to her office to finish her paperwork. If Pidge destroyed the machine, maybe she could write it off on the insurance as destroyed property.

She abandoned her work after doing only two pages and went back upstairs to make sure that the guy wasn’t poking through all her things. Allura had grown up in a military family and her father’s friends fell into two distinct categories. There were the guys who were so honorable that you could trust them with your life and soul and there were the guys you couldn’t trust to grab a bag of chips from your kitchen. She had trusted that this guy was the former but now she was worried.

“Hello?” she said as she stepped into the apartment.

He had the bathroom door open and was standing in front of her mirror in his uniform. He looked good in the uniform. He caught sight of her in the mirror and turned around to smile at her. The hair had been washed and brushed back into a very military style. She forgot what she had planned to say to him.

“Can I ask you for one more inappropriate favour?” he asked her.

“What’s that?” she said.

“Can you help me with the tie?” he said.

“You’ve never tied a tie before?”

“Honestly? I haven’t had to do it since I lost the hand and I didn’t realize it would be hard,” he said.

“Sorry,” she said. She hadn’t even noticed the prosthetic but now that she was looking, she could see that one of his hands wasn’t quite the right color for skin.

“Don’t worry about it. I worry that it’s the first thing that people notice and then they expect me to be unable to write my own name so it isn’t so bad to have someone not even realize it’s there.”

She came over to stand in front of him and he smelled like her body wash and hair spray. She could have taken the tie and tied it then given it back to him to adjust but instead she adjusted it where it was still hanging around his neck and tied it for him then pushed it up into place and smoothed his collar back into place for him. He watched her while she did it without saying a word. Allura did not look up at him.

“Is that alright?” she asked after tucking the tie into the jacket and looking up at him.

“What are you doing tonight?” he asked.

“Closing up a coffee shop.”

“What if you closed early?”

“Don’t you have a very important ceremony to attend?”

He smiled and nodded, “I have a plus one invitation. It’ll be boring but the food is good.”

Allura took a deep breath and started to say no but he was watching her so carefully and once she had made eye contact, she realised that she didn’t want to say no. She really did want to spend the evening in this man’s company.

“Lance can close. He knows how to do it,” Allura said.

“I’m supposed to be there at 5,” he said.

“So, I’ve got half an hour to get ready?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“Go downstairs. Eat your free cake, I need my bathroom back,” she said.

He smiled at her and for a brief moment, she thought he might try and kiss her but instead he nodded and stepped around her. She stopped him before he left the room, “Corporal?”

“Yes? How do you know my rank?”

“My father was in the military, I know most of the insignia,” she said. “What I don’t know is your name.”

“Shit, I should have a tag for that,” he said frowning down at his chest.

“It’ll be in the bottom of the bag, pins are always falling off. Now, strange man in my bathroom, what’s your name?” she asked.

“Takashi, people call me Shiro,” he said.

“Hi, Shiro, I’m Allura,” she said and she held out a hand for him to shake and then shooed him out the room so she could panic over attempting to dress for a first date at a dress uniform level event in less than half an hour.

She made it. Her hair wasn’t what she wanted it to be and she could have done better on the make up but by the time she made it down the stairs, she was feeling pretty good about herself. The dress was black and had a high neckline which made up for how slinky it was. It could have been trashy but she was pretty sure that she could pull it off with her hair done up the way it was.

“Whoa,” one of her staff said.

“Lance, I will pay you double time if you close tonight,” she said.

“Ok,” he said without any extra commentary for once in his life.

She turned to her date and gave him a big smile. He returned it as he stood up slowly. He looked her over with an expression that was right on the edge of polite. He opened the café door for her so she could step out ahead of him. He offered his arm and she took it and led him around the back to her little battered sedan.

He gave directions and told her where to park. He flashed his id badge at security guards and got them through all the gates and into a well appointed banquet hall.

“Can I introduce you as my girlfriend and leave out the little detail of only having met you this afternoon?” he said.

“Of course, you can, honey,” she said.

He laughed. “Thank you, darling.”

The event hadn’t started yet and the only other people who were there that early were the big wigs and the organizers who would be handing out awards and giving speeches. Allura was surprised to see a lot of familiar faces among the crowd. Her father had never made general but he’d come very close and almost all of his friends had been in the top ranks.

“Miss Altea, I didn’t expect to see you at this event, how’s your old man? Still running that coffee shop?” asked a man in general’s stripes who Allura could on remember as Coran.

“He moved upstate. My mother isn’t well and they wanted to get out of the city, I run the shop these days,” she said.

Coran told a few old war stories about her dad from their days on tour. He made them sound glamourous but Allura’s father had never been one for the glamour of war. Hearing the stories told like they were adventures instead of something hellish but honourable was unsettling. Shiro stood beside her, eventually getting pulled into the conversation but Coran was too busy telling old stories to really register who he was.

“Altea?” Shiro asked her once the conversation had moved on and General Smythe had moved on to talk to someone else.

“I didn’t realize that the name still carried weight. My father retired when I was ten,” she said.

“Altea,” he said again.

“Yes,” she said.

“Wow.”

“I just heard the story of what you did to get yourself a medal tonight,” she said.

“I’m an idiot who happened to get blow up, your father is a legend,” he said.

“My father used to put shaving cream on and then chase me around the house pretending that he had contracted rabies before going back to finish shaving. He also used to pretend to sleep and then leap up and grab nearby children and tickle us until we shrieked. These days, he builds bird feeders with complicated obstacles for the squirrels to run through because he thinks it’s funny to watch them. He spends 5 hours a day fishing and the rest of it reading history books,” she said.

Shiro laughed. “That doesn’t make him sound any less great.”

With the exception of a few other people who remembered her and her father and a large number of people who congratulated Shiro until he was uncomfortable, the evening was wonderful. Shiro was charming and had this twisted sense of humour that made her laugh at all the wrong times. He was polite and kind and had a great smile. He was calm and respectful when he accepted his medal.

It wasn’t the kind of event with dancing and Allura was deeply disappointed by that. She knew it wasn’t the type of event with dancing but she really wanted an excuse to slide in close to this man and hold on.

When they left he hesitated at the edge of the parking lot.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Train tickets,” he said.

“It’s ten o’clock at night. What train are you on?”

“Midnight train going anywhere,” he almost sang the last word and she broke out laughing. “Or back to apartment in the city.”

“That’s going to be a three hour trip,” she said.

“I know,” he said.

“That’s too far for this time of night,” she said.

“Do you have a better idea?” he asked.

She turned to face him and took his hat off, she ran her fingers through his hair to knock it down from the tight style he’d carefully brushed it into. It fell over his forehead and was long enough that he had to flick it out of his eyes. He watched her without question so she kept going. She undid his top button and pulled his tie loose.

“I think that you should go dancing with me and then we can go back to my place so you don’t have to travel tonight,” she said.

He held out a hand and she laced her fingers with his and pulled him forward.


	9. Shopping for Human Fashion

“Is this right?” she asked.

He turned around, prepared to comment on her wardrobe and stopped short. She’d found herself a pink sweater that was meant to slip down the shoulder and then she’d gotten it a size too big. It was almost indecent and it was adorably innocent all at once. She’d also styled her hair so that it covered her ears and that meant wearing it down and covering everything with a hat. Her jeans were tight and her little ankle boots had just enough heel to make her legs look longer than they were.

“It’ll do,” he managed to say in an almost normal voice. She looked human enough and that was all they really needed. That she also looked damn good was his own problem and he would deal with it.

“These?” she asked about the marks on her cheeks.

“We’ll pretend it’s a make up trend, just don’t bring them up in conversation and people will ignore them,” he said.

She was beautiful and the too deep dip of her shirt and the jeans and the shoes meant she looked more like a model than a normal person. It would mean she could get away with pretending the marks on her cheeks were normal. No one they were going to meet was going to guess she was an alien.

“Will you take me shopping more often?” she asked.

“You don’t need me to take you shopping,” he said.

“That wasn’t the question besides, I’m spending your money so I do need you for this little shopping expedition,” she said.

“What else do you need to buy?”

“I was thinking one of those with the lace and the glitter.”

She pointed out a dress as they walked by. Shiro scanned it and paused.

“Ok,” he said.

“We don’t need it for the mission.”

“Will it make you happy?”

“It’s just a dress.”

“I know that. Will owning it make you happy?”

“Maybe a little bit.”

“Then try it on, I don’t mind waiting.”


	10. Sleepy Shiro

Shiro fell asleep wherever he was tired. He had done distance flights where if you didn’t sleep when you had a chance, you might not sleep for the next 18 hours. He had been the only pilot they had so if they had to come down off autopilot, he was it.

It annoyed the hell out of Allura.

He wasn’t sure if it was an Altean thing or a princess thing or what it was but she was constantly poking him awake when he fell asleep on common room sofas and reminding him to go to bed. He’d mutter an apology and shuffle off to bed while she watched him with this perplexed look on her face.

She finally stopped bothering to wake him. He’d wake up find her sitting on the next chair over, reading and ignoring him.

“Go to bed, Paladin,” she’d tell him and he’d do as he was told or he’d pull himself up and blink himself awake and sit with her.

“Your clothes get all rumpled when you sleep in strange corners,” she said.

“Is there a dress code in the rec room?”

“Nevermind,” she said.

“I thought you found it a little weird but if it bothers you, I can stop napping in strange corners,” he said.

She gave him a look that he could not make sense of. Her head tilted just a fraction to the side, her lips pressed together in disapproval or confusion but not anger. She was baffling sometimes.

“You aren’t doing anything wrong,” she said.

“Am I annoying you?”

“No.”

He frowned at her, ran his fingers through his hair a few times because it had to be stuck down and it gave him something to do while he tried to make sense of her. She was still watching him. He gave up. It wasn’t going to make any sense and he was still to dozy to try and make sense of Altean traditions. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands to blot her out because she left him feeling half crazy.

“I’m gonna go back to sleep for another few minutes,” he said.

“Mm,” she said as thought it meant something.

He flopped back down on the sofa and faced away from her and let himself drop off to sleep because it was easier than making sense of it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Shiro, she thinks you’re adorable and doesn’t know how to tell you that you make her lose her mind when you’re all sleepy and oblivious.


	11. Dive Bar AU

“Kiss me, quick!” she said into his ear. 

He spun to look at her and it did not clear anything up. She was gorgeous and a complete stranger and he was pretty sure that she had just asked him to kiss her. Tall and confident, dark brown skin, snow white hair, smiling and resting a hand on his chest. What the hell alternate universe had he just entered?

But she leaned up, tilting her chin into him and he did as he was told because he was too shocked by the order to do anything else. It was a nice kiss, soft and sweet and she was wearing something on her lips that tasted faintly like dessert, vanilla maybe. 

“Why?” he asked when she drew back. 

“Because you look like you’d win in a fight,” she said. 

“What?” 

“My ex is working on becoming a stalker,” she said with a shrug. “This causes less of a scene than punching him in the face.” 

“You want me to punch him in the face?”

“No, honey, I can do that myself it needs doing. I just wanted him to storm off and leave me alone.” 

“Oh, well, I think it worked,” he said. He could see someone retreating through the crowd in the bar and a few bystanders casting them curious looks. She hadn’t stepped away from him and it was distracting as hell. She smelled good, she wore one of those shirts that slipped off one shoulder, she was prettier the longer he looked at her. 

“Pity, it was a good kiss,” she said. 

He hadn’t kissed anyone since he had got home. He spent most of his time in physical therapy at the VA or letting his mother fuss over how close he had come to dying. He also hadn’t kissed anyone during his entire eight month tour of duty and was pretty sure he’d forgotten how to do it entirely.

“If you need to do it again, I can look menacing in a variety of situations,” he offered. 

“Give me your phone,” she said. 

He started to argue and then shut up and handed her the ancient thing, it was scratched and clunky and wouldn’t run most apps but he hadn’t gotten a new one since long before basic training. She smiled at it as she fiddled with teh screen. 

“What did you do?” he asked. 

“Left you my number,” she said. 

Then she kissed him again and turned to saunter off into the crowd and leave him staring after her. 


	12. Tickling (Suggestive)

Allura shivered as he dragged his fingers up her side. She looked back over her shoulder at him and frowned just a little. He smiled in spite of himself. She was working. Again. She had the little screen out and was running through documents. He leaned in closer and kissed the back of her neck like he hadn’t noticed the look. They weren’t dressed yet. He was still drifting in that soft, sleepy lull after sex and she had gone back to work. He ran his fingers up the dip in her side again, getting another little shudder.

“Put the phone away,” he said.

“It’s not a phone.”

“Details.”

He trailed his fingers along her ribs and then back down to the sensitive spot that made her jump last time. She shifted under his hand. They’d been spending night wrapped up in each other for long enough that he thought he should have noticed if she was ticklish but apparently he had missed it. He trailed his fingers in light little circles along her skin and she gasped this time.

“Put it away, come cuddle,” he said.

“I need to check this.”

“It’s the middle of the night, you need to rest.”

“Give me a minute.”

He kept tracing circles and she twisted away from the feathery touch but he followed her. He moved from brushing fingers to tickling and she inhaled sharply. He didn’t stop and she twisted farther away but there wasn’t very far to go. He was stronger than her and he rolled her over so he was between her legs and could get both hands on the very bottom of her rib cage.

“Go ahead. Finish your thing,” he said without stopping. She kept squirming.

She yelped and twisted but couldn’t get away from him in the position she was in. She was still holding onto the phone as she squirmed but she dropped it a moment later to fight back. She was strong enough to lift him up off of her and toss him across the room but she didn’t. She slid her hands up his sides and tickled him under the arms until he he as laughing and trying to squirm away without letting go of her.

“Truce?” he finally said grabbing both her wrists and forcing them down so she was pinned out on her back and neither of them could touch the other.

She was laying out below him, flushed and smiling but she tried to frown at him.

“Terms?” she said.

“Phone away, no more tickling,” he said.

“I’m not tired,” she said.

“I’ll have to find another way to distract you.”

“Like what?”

His eyes trailed down her body, “I’ll think of something,” he said leaning down to kiss her.


End file.
